Snowshoes



I've been doing a fair bit of snowshoeing these days. The snow isn't terribly deep, I admit, but I do get a bit of flotation, and the exercize is good. As an added bonus, snowshoes let me go off the trail a bit. Since other animals tend not to stick the the human trails, the ability to go off trail is invaluable to the amateur naturalist.

I believe I've said before that you're far more likely to seen animal tracks than you are to see the animals themselves. Snowshoeing, I see, maybe a few deer if I'm lucky, and possibly some chickadees. However, I see the tracks of pretty much everything that lives in Ottawa's green belt. I'm starting to love snow for that very reason. I would, of course, prefer to see the animals themselves, but any port in the storm.

Firstoff, I saw coyote tracks aplenty. Now those who know me will know fully well how highly I think I think of canis latrans. I've heard them howling at night, and I always knew they were around academically, but I'd never seen their tracks before



for the record, though I couldn't manage a decent photo of it, those tracks veered off shortly thereafter, in the general direction of some rabbit tracks. Looks like it was a bad day to be a rabbit.

The BIG news, though, wasn't the coyote tracks. i ran across some tracks that were unfamiliar to me...small ones. So I snapped a picture, brought it home and studied it (thanks again for the camera, mom. it makes these things easier. That picture isn't as showy, so I'm not sharing it here, but it was clear enough for me to make an identification. It was an animal I have never seen, one I didn't even know lived in this area. it was a short tailed weasel, also known as an ermine mustela erminea. Apparently they're active all year round, and, as I saw, they often move in bounds. Nice to see, that.